


Bird of Prey

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 23:45:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6134197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Mother, make me—</i>
</p><p>Maggie and Helena, beginning to end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bird of Prey

**Author's Note:**

> [warnings: abuse (specifically child abuse), self-harm, emotional manipulation, animal death, disordered eating]
> 
> This references the [Helena comic](http://www.idwpublishing.com/product/orphan-black-2/) a fair amount. Here's a summary of the relevant bits:
> 
> When Helena is a teenager, Tomas tells her to shoot a dog with a sniper rifle. She refuses. She's thrown into a well because of this, and Tomas shoots the dog and throws it in after her. Maggie pulls Helena out, plays good cop. Helena eventually shoots the dog.
> 
> The Maggie Chen shooting is mentioned in the show, but what the show doesn't mention and what the comics _do_ mention is that Helena was there the whole time with a sniper rifle. She just couldn't bring herself to shoot Beth in time, and Maggie died because of that. :(

i.

The little girl falls asleep in the truck, when they drive back to the abandoned house they’ll be living in for the next few months. Maggie’s neck aches from the drive up to the convent but she turns around, anyways, just to look at the girl in the backseat. Her name is Helena, she'd said. In a few weeks Maggie is going to give her a gun.

“Should we feel bad about this?” she asks Tomas, watching the breath rise and fall in Helena’s tiny chest; her fingers twitch in dreaming, like she’s reaching for a hand that isn’t there.

“We’re doing God’s work,” Tomas says, not looking away from the road, not loosening his grip on the steering wheel.

 _That doesn’t answer my question_ , Maggie thinks. The truck hits a bump; Helena’s eyelids flutter, but she doesn’t wake up.

v.

In the eaves of the barn there are birds nesting; their shit is all over the floor of the loft and the ladder creaks ominously every time Maggie puts a foot on the rung but she climbs all the way up anyways. Helena’s sitting with her back pressed against a wall, staring at her hands like there’s some secret in them. She doesn’t say anything.

“Hey there, kiddo,” Maggie says. “I brought you a sandwich.”

“I’m not hungry,” Helena says, but she looks up. Maggie’s never known anyone who looks at you the way Helena does – like she’s pleading with you. You can see all of the hope naked in her eyes. She’s only thirteen, Maggie thinks to herself. Shit, she’s only thirteen.

Maggie walks over to Helena, sits down next to her, pulls out a sandwich. It’s roast beef; Maggie would’ve gone for Fluffernutter, but if they rot Helena’s teeth they’re fucked. It’s not like they can take her to a dentist, and even she and Tomas have their limits on medical knowledge.

Helena unwraps it and eats like she’s starving. Wait. No. More like:

Helena unwraps it and eats.

She’s starving.

She mutters something shamefully around a mouthful of sandwich and Maggie says, sharp: “Helena, _manners_.”

She swallows the food in one enormous lump and says, quickly, “I’m sorry please excuse me.”

“Good girl. What’d you say?”

Helena looks back at the crust. “I shot a dog today,” she says. The words ache with shame. “Tomas told me it was the only way to prove myself.” She looks at Maggie, eyes still so open. Too open. _Save me save me save me save me—_

“Helena,” Maggie says softly. “You’re the light. You know that, right?”

Helena nods, guiltily. She stuffs the rest of the sandwich in her mouth.

“Sometimes that means that you have to do things that seem like they’re tough, and unfair. But everything you do, everything you go through – it’s proving that you’re strong enough. You’re chosen by _God_ , Helena. You alone walk the path to the shepherd. If it was easy…well. Everyone would be walking it.”

“The others,” Helena whispers, “will they scream and bleed like dogs do.”

“They might,” Maggie says. “Can you handle it? If they scream, and beg, and cry?”

“I don’t know,” Helena says. It sounds like a question.

“I do,” Maggie says, slinging an arm around Helena’s shoulder and pulling her close. She nestles into Maggie with a desperate animal desire for some sort of warmth. She’s so cold. She’s all bones. “I know you, Helena. You’re the bravest thing I’ve ever known. You’ll be able to do it, when the time comes.”

“I’ll do it,” Helena whispers. “I am brave. I am the light.”

“You are,” Maggie says. “My brave, good girl.”

xiii.

(After the detective and her partner leave, Helena tiptoes from the alley and walks over to the body. Maggie’s eyes are staring up at the sky, up to where Helena was, up to where Helena should have been to save her.

She crouches down next to Maggie and slowly closes Maggie’s eyes with soft fingers.

“I am sorry,” she says, “that I wasn’t brave enough.”)

viii.

She does it, when the time comes. And again, and again, and again. And Maggie says _good girl_ and _I’m so proud of you_ and Maggie puts on her coat and takes Helena out to lunch. Or breakfast. Or dinner. Or, once, after a frantic shower to wash off all the blood, a 2am burger at McDonald’s. Every time she tells Helena she’s taking her to the best place in the city, she promises, and every time Helena’s eyes go so wide. Maggie tries to see these places through Helena’s eyes, sometimes, while chewing cold oversalted fries or poking at pancakes sticky with syrup. The greasy red booths shine like jewels. The chalkboard menus ache with someone else’s love, whoever stood there and proudly wrote _Soup of the Day_ in looping handwriting.

She can’t tell if it’s empathy or the grease that makes her feel sick. So she stops, after a while.

After Anya Sokolov, in Russia, Helena bites into one of her blini – filling spills everywhere, and she makes an annoyed sound – and says, with a sort of casual puzzlement: “I don’t understand why they try so hard to live.”

There’s a bruise on her face from Anya Sokolov’s fist, and she’s had to hunch down in her chair and keep her hood up. Maggie doesn’t blame her for being put-out. She puts down her bowl and sighs.

“Do you know what cancer is?”

Helena looks up, eyes wide and bright and hungry. She loves it when Maggie tells her things that she doesn’t know, gets desperately excited. In another world she might have made a brilliant scientist. In this world she can make a perfect headshot near-effortlessly and sometimes Maggie wants to grab her and walk through the crowds saying _look at this, look at what I’ve made_. But she doesn’t. She never does.

And Helena’s still looking at her. Shit. “Cancer,” Maggie says, “is when tiny little pieces of your body don’t do what they’re supposed to. Instead they just keep growing and growing and more and more of them come and eventually your body starts growing things called _tumors_. And tumors are bad, kiddo. People die from cancer. People die all the time.

“But the cells?” she says. “They’re just hungry. They’re just trying to do their job, but they’re doing it wrong. They don’t know they’re doing it wrong. You can try to tell them, but they won’t understand. All you can do for cancer is try to get rid of the tumor before the person dies.”

“ _I’m_ hungry,” Helena says, like it’s a revelation. Her eyes scream sympathy so loud Maggie’s surprised everyone in this shitty Russian fast food restaurant can’t hear it. Maggie reaches out and covers Helena’s hand with hers on the table.

“But you’re not cancer,” she says. “You’re the cure.”

Helena’s nodding, making Maggie’s words into something that she can believe. She internalizes words so beautifully. Maggie could tell Helena anything, and she would believe it. “I don’t want the world to be sick,” she whispers, but she looks so sick with love that she might die of it.

“I know you don’t,” Maggie says. “You’re going to cure the world. And the other copies don’t know, but they should thank you. You’re curing them too.”

“Thank you, Maggie,” Helena breathes, as if Maggie’s done her anything like a kindness.

“Eat up, Helena,” Maggie says. “Your food will get cold.” 

ii.

They don’t feed her for the first three days. Tomas says it’ll be effective, and Maggie trusts him with this – there’s something in his knuckles that says he knows what’s effective and what isn’t. So: Maggie leaves Helena in the closet in the back of the house, and curls up in a chair near one of the house’s smeary windows. The light falls through the glass, dusty and washed-out. She has an old notebook propped open on her lap; she’s reading, half-heartedly, about pluripotent stem cells. The writing is a near-illegible scrawl – it’s hurried, frantic with excitement. Some days Maggie just feels tired. She pops another piece of candied ginger in her mouth and bites down. It tastes the way the writing reads.

The house is so silent. Helena stopped yelling half a day ago; it’s just Maggie and Tomas in this house, and somewhere a girl slowly starving. Maggie keeps chewing. Her mouth tastes like sweet knives.

She hears Tomas’ footsteps before she sees him. “Margaret,” he rasps respectfully. He’s holding his copy of the Bible, pages worn near-transparent from the oil of his fingers. Both of them with their holy texts.

“Tomas,” she says. “Is she ready?”

“Soon,” he says. “Have patience. It will be ready soon enough.”

“She,” Maggie says lightly. “ _She_ will be ready.”

“ _It_ is an abomination.”

“ _She_ has to believe she’s different, or she’ll have doubts.” Maggie closes her notebook, looks at Tomas’ Bible. “You know how dangerous doubt can be, Tomas.”

Tomas recoils, like she’s slapped him. In retrospect she hadn’t meant to disrespect his own faith, but she wouldn’t take it back. She watches his hands, watches how they could become fists. Neither of them move.

“I’ll do my part,” Tomas says, “if you do yours.” He pauses, visibly struggles. “ _She_ – will need the both of us.”

“And we need her,” Maggie says quietly. “You know we do.”

“I understand,” Tomas says. He blinks at her for one slow reptilian second before lurching off to some other part of this enormous fucking house. Maggie watches his back as he goes, the set of his shoulders, the white of his knuckles around the black cover of the Bible.

 _Is this a mistake_ , she thinks, but she shoves that thought where all of her other thoughts go – somewhere in the back of her brain, with her regrets. She allows herself one second to close her eyes as tight as she can, and then she goes back to reading. 

vii.

Sleep is easy. She sleeps without dreams, always has. Strange, right? You’d think the cliche would be that she wakes, gasping, with a mouthful of nightmares. But Maggie closes her eyes and slips into unconsciousness like a pool of warm water, wakes just as easily. If she dreams, she can never remember them in the mor—

“Maggie,” whispers a voice, and Maggie jerks into wakefulness. Huffs for breath. Trust Helena to make a liar of her – because it is Helena, standing in the dark at the foot of Maggie’s bed and shivering. Her fingertips are bloody. The short white slip she’s wearing as a nightgown is unstained, at least from where Maggie’s sitting; in all white, hair blonde and feet bare, she looks like the angel they’re trying so hard to convince her she could become. Maggie cares for her so much it’s like a physical pain.

“Did you get hurt?” she asks, voice creaking with sleep; she sits up, rubs at her eyes. Exhaustion settles heavy on her spine – if Helena _didn’t_ get hurt they’re going to have to punish her, for waking Maggie up. Rules are rules.

But Helena shifts from one foot to another, twists her bloody hands. “I tried,” she says shamefully, and then louder: “Tomas _said_.”

Oh, shit. Fucking _Tomas_.

“Turn around,” Maggie says, and Helena does. The back of her makeshift nightgown is blotted with blood, too much blood, _far_ too much blood. Mother _fucker_. Maggie gropes for a hair tie, pulls her hair up behind her head and fumbles under the bed for the first aid kit. “Come on,” she says. “Bathroom.”

Helena winces; she and Maggie both were expecting the word _kiddo_ in there, an easy _don’t worry I’ll make it better_. But Helena should have known. _Tomas_ should have known. Maggie’s blameless, here, but here she is at (she checks) 2:07 in the morning with years of work just – bleeding all over a discount slip from Kmart. Maggie follows her into the bathroom thinking variations on the word _fuck_ while Helena turns on the light, sits in the bathtub, and wriggles out of the the straps of the slip with the expectant ease of a well-trained dog. She sits, head bowed.

Maggie clambers onto the edge of the bathtub, sighs at the wreckage of Helena’s back. Tomas’ idea, and it works – Helena’s only too eager to punish herself for any conceivable wrongdoing, shows Maggie and Tomas her scars like a puppy bringing home a stick. _I’m going to be an angel_ , she’d whispered to Maggie as Maggie had wiped the blood off one really bad cut.

(Maggie hadn’t said anything to disagree with her.)

The gash is enormous, slices around Helena’s left shoulderblade like red-black calligraphy. It probably needs _stitches_ , but Helena spooks at needles and would probably end up making more of a mess. On the other hand, she can’t just – _leave_ it, can she?

Can she?

Absentmindedly Maggie starts wiping away the blood, disinfecting the wound. Helena relaxes, going ridiculously pliant under the ministrations. “I had impure thoughts,” she says dreamily, like this is confessional and Maggie is anything like a priest.

“You thought things that were that bad?” Maggie says neutrally. “Bad enough to merit this much punishment?”

Helena’s neck tenses with a nod, but thankfully she realizes quickly enough that she doesn’t jostle. “Yes,” she says eagerly. “I dreamt about – one of the others. And when I woke up, I wanted her to be there, because I thought we were—” she makes an annoyed sound, guiltily whispers something that sounds like _sim’ya_. “But I knew. That this was a sin. So I…” she trails off, practically vibrating with the urge to ask Maggie whether she did okay, whether she did right, whether Maggie loves her now. Maggie wishes Helena wasn’t so easy to read. But Helena as a person is easy, and that makes Maggie and Tomas’ work easy too. To encourage Helena to protect herself would – would ruin everything.

“You did well,” Maggie says. The words are simple and quiet but they hit Helena like bombs going off. She sighs softly, and Maggie grabs bandages and sets to work fixing what she’s helped to break.

“Maggie,” Helena says, “why does it hurt?”

“You know the answer, Helena.”

“I am chosen by God,” Helena whispers. “But—” Maggie watches her hands twist in her lap, blood dried to a dull rust. _Please stop_ , she thinks, because if Helena keeps talking Maggie will have to take care of it or – god forbid – wake Tomas. They can’t let her think about things like this. It just won’t do.

Maggie closes her hand on Helena’s shoulder, one part comfort and one part warning. The bones, the bones, the bones. Helena goes very still, bares her neck to Maggie with a softness that says she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it. The bandage on her back only makes you notice how pale her skin is, waxy and clinging tenaciously to bone. She’s starving. They’re starving her.

“All clean, kiddo,” Maggie says, carefully pulling the straps of Helena’s nightgown back up, and Helena – slowly, slowly – leans her head back against Maggie’s leg. Like this Maggie can see the slope of her forehead, the dark flutter of her eyelashes. Helena’s eyelids close. Maggie watches the traceries of her veins. What a thing for man to have made. Helena’s a miracle, maybe, if not the one she thinks she is.

“Come on,” Maggie says. “Up you get. Not all of us can get away with no beauty sleep, you know.”

Helena’s eyes open, look adoringly upwards at Maggie. “Can I stay with you,” she says. “For tonight.”

Helena kicks. And clings. And, unlike Maggie, has nightmares.

“Alright,” Maggie says. “But you’ve got to be back in the basement before morning, alright? We can’t let Tomas know.” And she holds her finger to her lips, a silent _shh_.

Helena mimics it with the air of worship. “I will be quiet,” she whispers.

“Like a church mouse, huh?”

Helena’s face splits open in a grin. “Like a mouse,” she says, “from a church. Yes.” And she giggles, right there in the bloodstained tub, face cracked wide open with pure and easy joy.

vi.

Maggie’s the first one to see Helena after she dyes her hair, bleach dripping from the ends of it and landing in little pools on the carpet. (For weeks afterwards, when Maggie walks over that carpet, she’ll see the small discolored blotches on the carpet and be unable to stop herself from thinking about tears.) Helena’s eyes say: _did I do well. Are you proud of me. Love me, save me, love me_.

She helps Helena brush it out, the hair already falling in strange zigzag curls. Every time the brush runs through Helena’s hair she shivers, sighs. Small tender little sounds. She tells Helena she looks beautiful. She doesn’t know if she means it, but she says it anyways.

 

The second person to see Helena after she dyes her hair is Tomas.

 

She helps Helena after that too. Ice, bandage, the sound _shh_ applied liberally to the wound. _You should have asked_ , she says, words falling with the good cop’s ease from her lips. _You know you should have. You disobeyed us, Helena, we can’t have that._

Helena won’t stop crying. Her shoulders shake. Her back bleeds – there’s a cut in the middle of all that unmarked skin, where Helena had hit the sharp corner of a wall. Maggie cleans that too. Maggie is so good at this, all of this healing that does not heal. _She will need the both of us_. And _she_ is radiating adoration, in all the submissive lines of her body, in the way she is learning to hold very very still when Maggie puts her back together. She’s learning. She’s going to be so beautiful, someday. Their angel. Maggie’s angel. Hers.

ix.

She follows the other copies from a distance. Never gets too close. She can only see flashes of them – the nervous hunch of Ania’s shoulders, the lithe-static way Janika dances, Katja’s lip piercing glinting in the light as she throws her head back and laughs. She takes pictures. _Click_ , the echo of a gunshot that’s yet to fire. Her heart hurts, watching these girls live their lives, but she tells herself it doesn’t. Click click boom.

It’s easy to forget that someone’s human when you only see them in flashes and photographs. At the end of the day Maggie goes back to whatever cheap hotel room she’s bought herself for the night, creates Alice or Danielle or Sofia in a spread of photographs over the bed. Two-dimensional paperdoll girls, forever laughing or crying. One endless unbreathing moment.

She doesn’t show Helena the photos anymore. She would show them to Helena, _here’s what your target looks like_ , and then the photos would go missing. Helena hoarded them in her nests in the dark – piles of ratty blankets, filled with gnawed-on pizza crusts and photographs whose faces were smeared with greasy fingerprints. Sauce crusted on their necks, like blood. The worst thing: Maggie can’t tell if it comes from hate or love, that horribly casual disrespect for the pictures. It’s the very worst thing. It’s the reason she gives Helena passports instead, or shows her one photograph that never leaves her hand. Helena’s fingers are so often sticky with _something_ , sauce or icing or her own blood. There’s a reason they taught her to use sniper rifles. _Don’t touch._

Maggie had taken all the photographs she’d found in the basement back up into the light. She’d cleaned them off before she burned them, smiles and throats unmarked as they curled into ash.

xi.

There’s a headache banging at Maggie’s temples and her eyes are dry and she hasn’t found any results even though she _knows_ there has to be more than just one clone in the Toronto area. Fuck. She clicks her laptop closed, squints into the dingy light of her apartment. Her shoulders ache; she’s guessing from the lack of light out the window she’s been hunched over her laptop for two hours, at least. _Fuck_.

And Helena’s fallen asleep on her couch.

Maggie sighs, looks at her. Helena’s sprawled over the couch like a dozing cat, hand dangling so her knuckles scrape across the worn-out carpet. She’s gone absolutely limp – practically melting into the flat cushions on the couch. Maggie doesn’t even remember Helena coming in. That’s what she gets for giving their killer a key to her apartment, probably.

Next to her computer there’s a slice of cake with a fork stuck in it. The frosting’s congealed from sitting out for this long; Maggie spots its match in the corner of Helena’s dream-frowning mouth. She thinks, the way she’s been thinking for so long: _stop. Stop doing this. Stop being so kind._ You’d think by now kindness would have been beaten out of her, starved out of her, washed down the shower drain with all that blood. But here it is. Shitty grocery store cake, and a plastic fork.

If Maggie had fallen asleep on the couch, she thinks, Helena would have draped that threadbare blanket over her. She would have made sure Maggie didn’t get too cold.

Maggie sits there, picks up the cake and takes a small bite. Helena’s fingers curl and uncurl against the carpet; she breathes something that might be a name.

iii.

When they let Helena out of the closet she’s almost limp, all shaking fingers and jutting-out bones. She’s very, very quiet. It’s an already learned behavior, Maggie thinks. Someone taught her what to do when you are locked in a small space for this long.

(Or. Some _thing_.)

After she eats she sits by her empty bowl of broth and stares with a sort of bone-deep sadness at the spoon. Her mouth opens and closes a few times as she fishes for the right words. “Mothers, fathers,” she says, words so accented they’re barely intelligible. “Do not.” She looks at Maggie, puzzled and angry. “Mothers and fathers are happy when children eat.”

_You’re my parents. Why are you starving me._

“Helena,” Maggie says slowly, “I’m not your mother.”

“You have me now,” Helena says, brow still furrowed. “You… _chose_ me.”

“We did,” Maggie says. “Would you like me to tell you why?”

Helena nods, eyes wide with fear. “Yes, _pani_ ,” she says. Her face scrunches up. “Euhm. Ma’am.”

“Call me Maggie,” Maggie says. “Okay? Not _mother_ , or _ma’am_. Just – just Maggie.”

“Okay,” Helena whispers. “Okay, Maggie.”

x.

In Maggie’s locker there’s a pair of stick figures scrawled on the wall. A woman and a little girl. They’re holding hands.

xii.

Helena pulls out her sniper rifle case and wipes the specks of dust from it with loving gloved fingers. Maggie watches her, the way Helena’s movements come easy after all this time. What a thing they’ve done. What a thing they’ve made. Helena, sensing Maggie’s attention, looks up from her gun; her fingers curl over the case protectively and her eyes drift from Maggie to the cubbyhole of dolls and doll heads.

“No,” Maggie says gently. “Not today. This isn’t a game, Helena – Detective Childs is starting to become dangerous, and has to be eliminated.”

“I will eliminate her,” Helena says. Her eyes are steady with belief. All of her is steady, so steady, like she was born into this world only to be a weapon.

“I know you will,” Maggie says. “Do you have everything?”

Helena flips the lid of the case open, trails her fingers over various shining pieces of her gun. “Yes,” she says. She picks up a bullet, rolls it between her fingers. “Good riddance, Elizabeth Childs.”

“Not yet,” Maggie says. She checks her watch. “And if we don’t hurry, we’ll miss my meeting with her and she’ll keep on living. Come on.”

Helena grabs the case, hauls it after her with a sharp exhalation of effort. They walk out of the locker in silence, and Maggie pulls that great metal door down. Locks it behind her, heads to her car. Helena trudges after her, case banging against her knees as she goes.

“Do you remember the plan?” Maggie says.

“I will go up very high,” Helena says, dropping the case in the trunk and immediately shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat. “You will lure the sheep into the alley, and then…” she mouths _bang_.

“Yep,” Maggie says. “Bang.” Helena throws herself into the passenger seat of Maggie’s sensible little car, bangs her heels against the floor. She’s held a grudge against this car for years, ever since she realized she couldn’t fit her feet up on the dashboard. “I’m ready,” she says, and then says it again, louder, like she’s trying to convince herself. “I’m ready.”

“You are,” Maggie says. She gets into her seat, and starts the car.

It’s the last conversation they’ll ever have.

iv.

The sky is blue and the air is warm on Maggie’s skin as she crosses the field. She can hear birds singing, in the distance. The air smells like sweet grass. If the phrase “heaven on earth” didn’t make her laugh, she’d say this was it.

There’s a well in the middle of the field. Its cover is on. Maggie grabs the cover’s handle in her hands, and drags it off. Ties the rope she’s holding to the handle of the well, throws the other end of it down.

“Maggie?” comes a small voice from the bottom of the well, and Maggie sits down in the grass and waits for Helena to pull herself out.

**Author's Note:**

> Mother, make me  
> Make me a bird of prey  
> So I can rise above this, let it fall away  
> Mother, make me  
> Make me a song so sweet  
> Heaven trembles, fallen at our feet  
> \--"Mother," Florence + the Machine
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
